398 BRITISH BIRDS. 



young birds, totally incapable of flight, are seen on the sea is an undisputed 

 fact; but the means by which they get there is the vexed question. 

 Many ornithologists believe that the young bird is conveyed to the water 

 below by its parent; and the veteran " dimmer'" Lowney positively 

 assured me that he had seen the old bird in the act of conveying her 

 young down to the sea on her back. About halfway down the little 

 creature slipped off : the mother flew round and round it, screaming as if 

 in alarm; but the young bird swam away all right, and did not seem 

 injured by the fall. After all there is nothing very wonderful in this 

 procedure, for many of the Swans and Grebes may be seen repeatedly 

 with their young upon their backs. Waterton's observations of the 

 Guillemots at Flamborough confirm Lowney's story. 



The Guillemot is about as large as a small Duck, but possesses little 

 variety in the colours of its plumage. The adult in breeding-dress has the 

 entire head and neck, together with all the upper parts, dark brown, with 

 a slaty tinge on the back ; wings dark brown, with the secondaries tipped 

 with white ; the whole underparts below the throat pure white, the flanks 

 and under wing-coverts streaked with dusky grey. Bill black; legs and feet 

 dark olivaceous ; irides hazel. The female does not differ from the male 

 in colour. After the autumn moult the upper parts are darker in colour, 

 the throat and sides of the head are white, like the rest of the underparts, 

 but a dark streak passes from behind the eye through the white on the side 

 of the head. Young in first plumage very closely resemble adults in winter 

 plumage, but the brown of the upper parts has no slate-grey tint, the white 

 on the underparts is more suffused with brown on the sides of the neck 

 and breast, and the bill is shorter and paler. After the first spring moult 

 young birds scarcely differ from adults, except that the bill is not so large 

 nor so black. Young in down have the upper parts brownish black, and 

 the underparts greyish white. When half-grown the belly becomes whiter, 

 but it extends in a narrow line along the centre of the breast and throat, which 

 do not become black as in the Razorbill at the same stage of plumage. 



The Ringed Guillemot differs from the Common Guillemot by having a 

 ring of white round the eye, and a narrow streak of the same colour 

 extending backward and downward from the eye. Its geographical dis- 

 tribution is the same as that of the Common Guillemot, both birds, as 

 has already been remarked, always being found in company; but it is a 

 much rarer bird, its proportions to the common race being, on an average, 

 one to ten. In the British Islands this percentage varies considerably in 

 different localities. In Handa and Ailsa Craig the Ringed species is in 

 about the proportion of one to ten or twelve ; in the Hebrides it is about 

 one to five. At the Bass the Ringed birds are rare ; at the Fames the 

 percentage is about one to ten of the common species ; whilst at Bempton 

 and Flamborough the proportion of the Ringed birds is about one to five. 



